Cardiovascular disease adversely affects lives of millions of patients around the globe. The economic impact is often in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars. For example, in the United States alone, approximately 5.7 million people live with heart disease and management of these patients accrues a cost of nearly 34 billion per year. Over 50% of patients with heart disease do not respond to current pharmacological therapies. To date heart transplantation is the most effective option for patients suffering from end stage heart failure. However, in addition to the logistical and medical complexity of this therapeutic option, donor organ shortage represents a major limitation, and up to 20% of the patients die while on the waiting list. Thus, there exists a need to circumvent these current clinical limitations by engineering an artificial heart that displays functional and morphological properties of the native heart and remains viable after implantation.